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Welcome to Sacramento Central Seventh-day Adventist church here in Sacramento, California. We're so glad that you're tuning in whether you are joining us live at our website at 'saccentral.org', on the radio, or on the various television networks - dvd - however you are joining us, welcome. And I hope that you are ready to pull out your hymnals and sing with us because that's what we do at the beginning of our program before we have our lesson study - we sing and we praise the Lord. And from around the world we have got song requests and today is no exception. #198 - 'And can it be?' - This is from oona and jizelle in antigua and barbuda, irene, nola, kenyon, and felicia in australia, wilbert, lorna, and hezron in belize, omar in California, albert, ann, and stan in Canada, zoraida in cayman islands, hervin in Connecticut, shavon in england, norman, raxon, antoinette, morgan, adriel, and everette in jamaica, boyblue in Massachusetts, henry in Minnesota, daphne, marie, and Jude in New York, magdalene, elisius, and cecilia in saint lucia, courine in saint vincent and the grenadines, abby in trinidad and tobago, Paul in uganda, and sharon in zimbabwe.

#198 - And we're going to sing all three stanzas - no - first, second, and fourth. 'Bold I approach the eternal throne and claim the crown through Christ my own. Amazing love.' We don't have to go through a human to get to Jesus; we can approach the throne of grace boldly. That is a promise that we can claim. You can approach Jesus and you can just talk to him as a friend - no matter what you're going through, no matter where you are there is a connection whenever you need it and I hope that is every moment of every day.

Our next song is #28 - 'praise we the Lord' - this is our new song that we are learning this week as we continue our journey through the hymnal learning the new ones. It is a lovely song and the history on this, which I think will make it more interesting as we go through these new songs, is to learning the stories behind them. And this one is a french carol melody and I thought that carols were what you sing at Christmastime. I have been corrected this week. A carol is a song that has been written - and they have them for every season - and a lot of events in life so it's not just Christmastime.

This one is one about spring and can also be sung at a wedding. So 'praise we the Lord is our new song and we're going to sing all three stanzas. This is from maisie and karl in france, dalton in jamaica, and bradley in south africa. #28. When you see a simple flower it's actually not that simple.

When you actually take the time to look at it - the intricate design, the petals - how the creator put that together. I hope every time you're out in nature and you see more than just flowers that you think about who made them and how much he loves us. There's never such a thing as a simple thing when it was created by Jesus. It is time for you to send in your favorite Christmas songs - silent night and all the others. Go to our website at 'saccentral.

org' and click on the 'contact us' link and you can send those in. We record three weeks ahead so that's why, to us, it might be the end of September but it's actually the middle of October by the time this airs - so get them in because we're going to start singing those very soon. Let's bow our heads for prayer. Father in Heaven, thank you so much for the love that you have for us - for creating beauty in this world that is full of sin. There is still so much beauty and we look forward to the day when we can see the new earth that has not been touched with sin.

I pray that we will each be ready for when you come and you take us home to heaven to live with you forever and ever. The amazing love that you have for us that took you to this earth to become a human, to die on that horrible cross so that one day we can be with you forever and ever. Father, may we never forget what you have done. May each morning when we wake up - may we spend that time with you that we desperately need in order for us to be ready for when you come in the clouds of heaven. Be with us as we open your word and we study together.

Be with Pastor Doug as he brings us the lesson study. In Jesus' name, amen. Our lesson study is going to be brought to us by our senior pastor here at Sacramento central, Pastor Doug Batchelor. Good morning. Happy Sabbath everybody.

And glad to see you here. Glad to see any visitors that might be studying with us today at Sacramento central and we have a very important lesson today in our new quarterly dealing with growing in Christ and we'll get to that in just a moment. We have a free offer for you because our lesson today is dealing with the creation of man and it's going to be talking about 'how evolution flunked the science test' and I think that you're going to find that very interesting. If you'd like this free offer, we invite you to send to - well, you can call - call the number on the screen - 866-study-more - that's 866-788-3966 and ask for offer #169. We'll send it to you free.

This is by Joe Crews - it's still a very good and relevant book on some of the - the misinformation out there about believing in creation - that it's supposedly unscientific. Actually, believing in evolution has some real science problems. And so, we'll send that to you for free. In a moment our lesson - you know, I just wanted to mention something - one reason that we record and broadcast both Sacramento central study hour - our Sabbath school time - as well as our church service a little later is because there are thousands of churches - multiplied thousands of churches around the world that do not have a full-time pastor. Did you know that? I remember one time when I was pastoring in Texas, I had a church and two companies so there was like three churches really, I was responsible for and they were so far apart you can't get to every one every week.

And so, there are a lot of churches that do not have a regular pastor who can bring the sermon or sometimes the Sabbath school teacher in these small congregations is not available or - for whatever reason - and we produce these so that the churches can not only watch them ahead of time and might add to the discussion, but also some don't have a church they can go to and their church is what they get off satellite or off the internet. Another reason is some record the services and they use it as their service. And so that's why Sacramento central does this - we provide these materials - we're just trying to nurture many other churches as well in the process. And so pray for us, we're humans, we do the best we can to minister to all the different churches out there. But that's one reason we do it is to multiply these programs and make church services available.

And we also have a number of people who are online members of Sacramento central because there is no local congregation they can study or worship with and we just want to give them a connection as well as possible through the internet. If you'd like to know more about that, just go to 'saccentral.org'. I was interested this week - I just typed in the words 'central church' - do you know how many central churches there are in the world? And I thought, 'I'll just type in central church and see what happens - we're on the first page - Sacramento central. So that was encouraging and that means a lot of people are using the internet resources. 'Saccentral.

org' - you'll find more information there. All right, our lesson today is dealing with mankind - it's lesson #3 - 'mankind: God's handiwork' - as opposed to something that evolved. So really the lesson is talking about evolution and creation and the differences between that - how the Bible really teaches that man is created, man is not the result of something that evolved over millions of years. That's a very important truth. I would have been happy for an 'amen' - even though this is a Sabbath school class, it's just encouraging.

We have a memory verse - psalm , verse 3 - I invite you to say it with me - psalm 100, verse 3 - it's in your lesson and, of course, it's in your Bible. Are you ready? "Know ye that the Lord, he is God; it is he who has made us, and not we ourselves;" humanism sort of places man as his own creator but the Bible is very clear we are created by God. Now, this is a very important study and I should maybe just give you a little background. When I come to this subject, this study about the origin of man, I feel very passionate and the reason is I was not raised believing in creation, I was raised believing in evolution and I really believed it and I was very passionate about it and I derided and made fun of anybody who believed something so absurd that God suddenly spoke and people appeared. I thought, 'that's ridiculous.

' I mean, 'there's no evidence for that.' I'd never seen anything like that happen before and to me it was a fairy tale worse than a fable. And I remember deriding and making fun of friends of mine - I remember some friends I met at a summer camp - they were actually Jewish and they believed in a literal creation and I just - I called them all kinds of derogatory names. So, for me, it was a gradual process, when I began to read the Bible, to take the idea literally that, really, we were created and at the same time I was reading the Bible, I was having great doubts about how evolution could explain the incredible sophistication and design and organization and structure and purpose that you find in the objects of creation. The other thing that was difficult is, 'how could you explain all of the different symbiotic relationships that you've got, for instance, between birds and bees and flowers? And how one cannot exist without the other and the only way that one can continue to exist is through the cooperation of the other and how would they evolve independently to be so utterly dependent?' I couldn't find a good explanation for that. And so, I began to continue to study and finally I came to the conclusion that, for me, the only logical, rational, scientific explanation is that it was such - creation is so miraculous - every cell of life is so complex, that it required more faith for me to believe it happened over millions of years than for me to believe that a powerful God - an outside intelligence - brought these things miraculously - miraculously, simply because we don't understand the process of the miracle - but he spoke them into existence.

Oh, by the way, now scientists are delving into something called 'string theory' and a very simplified version of that is that all of life in the universe - that all of matter in the universe came into existence through vibrations of sound. Well, you know, the Bible says, 'and God said...' Well that's really - it's always been the Word of God that's brought everything into existence so I thought that was - that was interesting that now they're kind of coming around - that vibration of sound that brought everything into existence was the Word of God. Anyway, so I am coming to this subject with a bias now, but it's very different from the one I grew up with - it's something I struggled through - but with that introduction, let's get into some of our Scripture. Someone look up for me, first of all, Jude 14 - I can't tell you Jude chapter 1, but it is chapter 1 - Jude 14, only one chapter in Jude. And while we're getting ready for that, I'm going to be reading Genesis 1:27 - got your Bibles? Genesis 1:27, "so God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

" Both male and female were created in the image of God. You know, there's a little quote from shakespeare - I don't often reference shakespeare in our study - but in the tragedy of hamlet shakespeare, describing man, he says, "what a piece of work is man. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculties, in form, and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals." It is obvious that man was made in the image of God. God said a very long time ago, back in the beginning, 'and the dominion of the world I will give to thee.

' How can this 'naked ape' as we are called - how helpless is a human baby compared to all the other creatures? How in the world could something so helpless end up ruling all other creatures? How can man have evolved with % more brain than he ever uses in his lifetime? Man was created in the image of God. There is just something extraordinary and majestic and noble about men. All right, something else we're going to read about men please, Jude verse 14. Jude 14, "now enoch, the seventh from adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, 'behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his saints.'" Enoch the what of adam? The seventh. You know, one thing that - have you ever read through the Bible and in Genesis, in Numbers, in Chronicles, in Matthew - you run into this - these lists called the chronologies - the begats - and how many of you will confess that you have flipped through the begats sometimes thinking, 'oh, this is getting a little boring.

' Well, you know, we've been doing something very exciting at Amazing Facts - it's a project over a year old - where we are taking - it's a Bible timeline. We're taking the history of man from the Bible starting with creation going through everybody from adam to Abraham, the Exodus, Moses through the Kings and the Judges, new testament - all the way through the Bible prophecies, the charts of Bible prophecy, up to the second coming. No, we do not set a date for the second coming but we have a Bible timeline and we've added up all the chronologies and it's forced us - we've had some very interesting discussions at our office - e-mails - we're talking to scholars around the world, we're delving into - I'm calling the Bible research institute. We're just getting all the information we can to have the most accurate biblical timeline with all the charts and then put it on the internet so it's a website where you can scroll back and forth through all the primary characters. You can click on it - it'll show you how long they lived, when they lived, who they were contemporaneous with - and on this master timeline - where they appeared in history.

It's going to be very interesting - and it'll tell you about that person as well. So, you click on David it won't just tell you his name, it'll tell you about his family, when his sons lived - it's a big project but we think that people all over the world are going to start using this website because it's - and it'll also teach Bible prophecy. It's going to be the Bible prophecy timeline. And, well, we've got to define that, but it's a - Bible prophecy timeline is the working title for it. Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all of this is because it's really strengthened my faith.

For one thing, I'm not skimming through the begats right now because I'm getting to know these characters. And the other thing is the amazing cohesion between the timelines and their lives - and even some that you think are different. For instance, the genealogy of Jesus that you find in Luke is a little different from the one that you find in Matthew. Well, the very fact that there are some differences actually strengthens your faith because one is going through the genealogy of Christ back to David going through mary, the other is going through Joseph but - so what it's made me do is believe this is true. These people really lived.

There is a chronicled record - history of their lives. And when it talks about enoch the seventh from adam, it means that he was the seventh generation. The other thing, I think, that we need to remember - it tells you adam lived 900 years - 930 actually - and then it talks about the life span of seth and then it goes to the life span of enoch, for instance, he lives years - very interesting number - and he has methuselah and he disappears - he walks with God. It tells how long methuselah - he lived right up until Noah - he lives about 950 years, Noah lives longer than adam - and then their lives start getting shorter because the environment's changed after the flood and it goes down to 600 and 500 and 400 and 300 and 200 - Abraham's father lived 200 years, job over 200 years. It goes down slowly.

People used to think 'those are spiritual Numbers.' No, they're not. If they were spiritual Numbers then after the flood they'd just drop down to 70 years, but they don't. It's gradual. Man is not going from gorilla to God. Man went from God to gorilla.

You know, it's very sad that a few years ago pope John Paul ii issued that the catholic church officially does not find the teaching of evolution conflicts with Christianity or the Bible. That was their finding. I was very sad. Of course, I respectfully disagree with that but, you know what that means? That means that for millions of years you've got this creature that's dragging its knuckles - this hairy creature - and it's a gorilla-chimpanzee-like creature and then finally one day he starts standing a little straighter, a little straighter, doesn't drag his knuckles quite as much and then the Bible declares 'that's adam.' And now he's got a soul. And the day before his ancestors did not have a soul and he's not that smart of an adam, he's just come out of the gorilla stage and we're just getting better and better.

That's completely the opposite of what we see - opposite of what you see in the Bible and history. These people who built the pyramids were not imbeciles. I've traveled around the world and seen some of the ruins of these ancient civilizations and they were very intelligent and very sophisticated. And how they were ever able to achieve - with primitive tools - supposedly primitive tools - the incredible things they achieved - no, man was very noble. The reason that writing doesn't appear until about the time of Moses or shortly before, is not because they hadn't figured out how to write, it's because their minds and memories were so fantastic that they didn't need writing.

You said something they remembered it their whole life. They had virtually photographic memories. Finally, with the degeneration of sin, their memories were more frail and maybe their honesty more defective and they started to chronical history. And it's interesting how writing appears all over the world in these different forms. The Bible is true.

Man was created in the image of God. And you can't believe the Bible and say, 'well I believe in the Bible but I also believe in evolution.' They are inconsistent, friends. They're just utterly inconsistent and I'm going to show you some of the reasons why. Romans 5, verse 14. Someone look up for me Genesis :20 - who'd we give that to? Do I have a hand? Okay, you'll be in line here.

But let me read Romans 5:14. "Nevertheless death reigned from adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of adam, who is a type of him who was to come." Death reigned from gorilla? From amoeba? From single-cell life forms or from adam? Meaning before adam death did not reign. The idea that adam just sort of emerged in the evolutionary process - evolution teaches that there was death and killing and dying and that's why we've got all these bones and fossils around the world - is they say there was all this death and dying - that's why you've got coal is because all this peat moss and this plant material - that's why you've got oil - all this stuff died - the world was full of death and the tyrannosaurus rex was tearing apart the triceratops and all these animals were hunting - and all this predation and disease and adam was just along in the line of it - according to evolution. Those who claim they believe in evolution and still believe in the Bible doesn't - it's inconsistent. There was no death until adam.

It was the sin of man that brought death. All the disease and the killing and the destruction that you see didn't end with adam, it started with adam and eve with the sin. All right, let me read you another one here. Corinthians 15, verse 20, "but now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death.

" Is there any question about what the Bible teaches? I mean you may not believe the Bible and that's just your right, but if you believe the Bible did death come through millions of years of process or did it come from man? "For since by man came death. By man also came the resurrection of the dead." Meaning Jesus is the solution for the problem. "For in adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order; Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ's at his coming." So the dead in Christ rise at his coming. All right, read for us please Genesis 3:20.

"And adam called his wife's name eve, because she was the mother of all living." All right, that's another very important point on origins. Not only does the Bible tell us that death originated with adam, but it tells us everybody else alive came from eve. Eve did not have a mother. Eve had a father, God. Actually, adam and eve were brother and sister and the first humans - when you think about it, they came from the same creator - and the first humans - 'where'd cain' - most common Bible question we get at the radio program - 'where did cain get his wife?' 'I started reading the Bible this year' - matter of fact, January we get this question a lot because all these people decide 'I'm finally' - new years' resolution - 'I'm going to read the Bible.

' So, a week or so into January we get all these calls - 'wait a second here, who did cain marry? It says adam and eve had two sons - one killed the other and then he took his wife and - where'd she come from?' And you've got to read - you know it doesn't always tell right away about the girls because the genealogy is traced through the boys, but you read in Genesis chapter 5 and it says, 'adam and eve had sons and daughters - and they probably had just a trainload of sons and daughters. It just talks about - I mean, if you live 900 years and if you're healthy for even 70% of that, you think about, you know, just the gaggle of kids you could have in that period of time. They - the children of Israel - it says they multiplied exceedingly greatly while they were in Egypt. They went from 70 souls and some servants to almost a million in years. And so, they had big families.

But then again - Moses you think lived a long time? It's all fresh in my mind because we've been doing this timeline. Moses' father amram - he lived years and his father kohath lived 133 years and his father levi lived 137 years. Abraham still had children after Isaac - did you know that? The miracle wasn't that Abraham had a child when he was 100, because he had more after Sarah was gone. Oh, I wish I had thought to take that, I would have put it on the screen. You could search the archives and find this.

There is a newsweek magazine and it's got eve on the cover - she looked like a semi-gorilla man - she looks like the missing link but it calls her eve and it says they've traced all the dna of humans back to one original person. Some of you may have remembered that one. Now, I don't think eve looked like a gorilla but I think they're right that you can trace all the dna back. I think you can trace it all back to Noah's family biblically, right? All right. The image of God part 1.

Genesis 1:26 - let me read this for you. "Then God said, 'let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.'" Now, you know one miracle - when you read this verse, just about - first of all, God said, 'let us make man in our image.' Man is made in the likeness of God. Does God have a physical form? Does the Bible speak about the hands of the Lord? Yes. Does the Bible speak about God's feet? Yes. Does it speak about his arms? Yes.

Does it speak about his hair? Yes. Does it speak about his eyes? Yes. I'm just wondering if it speaks about his nose - I'm not sure. But the Bible describes God as having a form. I almost said, 'man-like' but it's not that God looks like us, it's that we look like him.

And so, he has a real form. Man was literally made in the image of God. And people will say, 'well, you know, there's a lot of other creatures in the world that have similarities to man.' I mean, you know, you can see certain features - you can look at the face of a monkey and see that there's some comparison with man or some other things - they're more man-like and there are some creatures that are more monkey-like than others and then there are some creatures that are more squirrel-like and you're going to find lines that you could draw between all kinds of creatures and that shouldn't surprise you. You know why there are similarities and there are varying degrees of intelligence in the land and in the sea and in the air? It's because God loves variety and the reason there are similarities is because they all operate in the same environment. For example, you could go to Michigan and you could buy a car made in the u.

s. And then you can go to france and buy a peugeot - I've driven both - and you know what? You're going to find on both cars there are tires, on both cars there are windshield wipers, on both cars there is a steering wheel, there are headlights, there's an electrical system, there's a lubricating system, there's an ignition system, there's going to be internal combustion, there's going to be a drive system and a transmission, there's going to be a braking system - they're going to have all kinds of things in common. They may even be the same color, but it doesn't mean they were both made in Michigan. The reason they've got similarities is they drive in the same environments. And so God has got this broad spectrum of creatures in the world but you're going to find similarities because they breathe air and they have to be mobile and - do you see what I'm saying? And so people say, 'oh, look at the similarity.

They're both red, they must have both come - the chevy must have come out of the peugeot.' That's really the logic that's being used. All right, so now I started saying one thing - and God says, 'let us' - that means God the father, son, and spirit involved in the creation - 'make man in our own image and give him dominion.' What's amazing is when Moses said this was the world thoroughly populated back in Moses' day or was it still comparatively sparsely populated? Comparatively it was sparsely populated. There were a few places where there were centers of civilization. The rest of the world was pretty wild and so when Moses said, 'give dominion of the world to man' that was a prophecy. Now when you fly around the world - and even from space - and you see the illuminated cities and the lines of our streets and the dams and the reservoirs and the planes flashing through the sky, is there any question that man has dominion of the world? Even though we're such frail creatures compared to others.

This is something God said - he was going to give dominion of the world to man. There's - and it doesn't mean we're to abuse that dominion because God will destroy those that destroy the earth, amen? Mark 12, verse 15 - and I'll read through verse 17. They were asking Jesus - Mark :15 - "shall we pay, or shall we not pay?" - Meaning tribute to caesar - "but he, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, 'why do you test me? Bring me a denarius that I may see it.'" So someone fished out and gave him a coin and "they brought it. And he said to them, 'whose image and inscription is this?' They said to him, 'caesar's.' And Jesus answered and said to them, 'render to caesar the things that are caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' And they marveled at him." For one thing, they couldn't trap him in His Words, but even beyond that he was saying, 'look, you're wondering who to give your money to - who does it belong to? Who is stamped on the money? And they said, 'well, caesar's stamped.' 'Whose signature? Whose name is stamped on it?' 'Caesar's.' Well, he said, 'give to caesar the things that are caesar's. And then he, by implication, is saying, 'and whose image is stamped on man?' God's image is stamped on man.

'Whose name?' The Bible tells us that the name of The Father will be written in the foreheads of those who are redeemed and the name of the beast will be written in the foreheads of those who are lost. So whose name and inscription - whose stamp and inscription do you and I bear? Do we bear the image of God? You know why this is so important to know we were made in the image of God? Because the whole Bible is about that image being defaced and the plan of salvation is to restore the image of God. Image not just being that we've got hands and eyes and a nose and feet - a monkey has that - the image of God being restored is talking about the character of God - that loving nobility that was in Christ that was originally in adam, the plan of salvation is to restore that to man. And so, it's important to know that we were made in his image. How many of you remember in Mark chapter 5 and Luke chapter 8 you've got the story of the demoniac? This man - and he's on the shore of decapolis or gadara, same region - and Jesus meets him.

The disciples run for the water when they see this crazy lunatic come running out of one of the tombs or caves and he's dragging chains and screaming, naked, covered with scars and wounds, wild eyed, long haired, dirty - I mean just - this is a monster of a human creature filled with - Jesus talks to him and he says, 'my name is legion' because thousands of demons have filled this man. And he comes and runs up to Jesus and falls down before Jesus to worship him. This is an incredible story because here you have a showdown between two individuals. One is completely filled with the devil. You know, not only would God like to reproduce his image in you, the devil would like to reproduce his image in you.

And if you want to find a place in the Bible where the image of the devil is pretty well reproduced in man, it's the demoniac because he is so full of devils - you can see what the devils plan is for humanity in that demoniac, right? His purpose is to erase the dignity of God from man and make him look like a raving beast. It's no wonder - it's no wonder that in the world today so many people are confused about their purpose of life. It shouldn't surprise us that the largest group that commits suicide are teenagers. Because if they go to schools and they're being told that you are nothing more than an animal and there is no purpose to life, it just really lowers your self-esteem - and this is the devil's plan - to make us appear that we are just beasts and God's plan is for us to recognize our noble calling. Evolution is not only wrong, it is dangerous - what it does to our society.

Is it any wonder that everybody thinks that 'we've got these animal urges so why get married? Let's just shack up because we're just animals and it's perfectly normal.' Well, if you think you're nothing more than a dog when it comes to your passions and desires then that's understandable. But the Bible says you're not to be controlled by the flesh - you are not an animal. You are made in the image of God and those desires should be subject to the higher nature - the God-like mind that he's given you. Part of your brain is the cerebellum and part is the cerebrum - am I getting them right? One of them controls the animal-like functions - you know, animals think 'I'm hungry' or 'I've got these passions' whatever it is and they're controlled by the animal desires. People are not animals in that respect.

We are made in the image of God. Those desires should be subject to the higher natures of man. But if we're being told, 'we've all evolved. It's all an accident. You're all just animals.

' Why would you be surprised that people behave that way? Those two individuals on the shore of gadara - decapolis - Christ is the fullness of God in man. The demoniac is the fullness of devils in man. It's interesting, they came together and you wonder which one is going to win. Jesus spoke a word and he turned this devil-filled man into a saved man. He actually made him an evangelist and sent him out working.

He restored his image in this man. Can the Lord still do that with people today? But it's very important to know that the demoniac - this is abnormal behavior for man. Jesus - this is the original design for man. And everybody chooses every day whether they believe we're becoming more like God through following Christ or we're just animals that are supposed to surrender to those desires like other animals do. Survival of the fittest - it's just - it's inconsistent.

Now, you know what the big - one of the big struggles - I know I'm talking more than I normally do - maybe not - maybe I normally always talk this much, but I usually like to engage you with reading Scriptures more but I need to make a few points here. The religion of evolution stands or falls on dating. I don't mean like the dating game dating, I mean - well, it is a dating game. I'm talking about the dating methods that they use for dating the world. It all hangs on that because if they cannot prove that the world is thousands and millions and billions of years old and all these artifacts and fossils that we find - if they're dating methods are wrong and you can prove that maybe the world is in the neighborhood or at least man's history is in the neighborhood of 6,000 years, the whole evolutionary theory implodes.

It completely disintegrates. They must have long periods of time because you and I in our lives and in modern history, there's no record of a horse turning into an elephant or a cat turning into a dog. There is no visible evidence of this kind of macro-evolution. Yes, we do see micro-evolution - you do see that a bunny in the desert may turn brown and a bunny in the arctic may get white fur and God has built into the bunnies the ability to camouflage themselves to survive, but the bunny does not turn into an alligator. We don't see that anywhere.

You see what I'm saying? And so yes there is - God has built a certain amount of micro-evolution into his creatures. Look at the great diversity of dogs. National geographic had a cover - I've mentioned to you before - titled - just a few years ago - the title was 'from wolf to woof' - like woof woof - 'from wolf to dog' and they showed how all these bizarre dog-like creatures that we've got - you just think about everything from the dachshund to the great dane to the little weiner dogs - what do they call them - the dachshunds and the beagles and then those dogs that are like a big lump of wrinkled skin, and then you've got dogs you can't find the nose or the eyes because it's all hair - you don't know which end is up - and just all this incredible - and then you've got dogs with no hair and they just shiver all the time and they look so scary, right? Look at the incredible diversity in dogs, but they can trace all that diversity comes from two dogs - two probably wolf-like dogs and it's bred that way. And so, yes, God build some incredible ability into all of his creatures for all kinds of different adaptations but they stay dogs. And all kinds of dogs can breed with dogs but they can't breed with cats.

The Bible says, 'each one after his kind' right? So the whole thing rests on the dating system. Well, the dating system is extremely flawed and it's been proven very flawed and there's all different kinds of dating methods that they use and they're all very suspect. For example, you've got the radio isotope dating. They're assuming with the carbon-14 dating that you've got a closed environment - that means going back millions of years - in order for it to be consistent you can't have outside forces changing the data. They have no way to prove that it's a closed system, that there were no outside forces.

We believe before the flood the atmosphere was different. The environment was very different. The radiation from the sun was different. The content of the earth's materials was different. It was a cataclysmic upheaval.

Everything was different back then. Noah came forth from the ark - he didn't even recognize the world that he beheld. And so, for them to assume that that's all reMained the same is really reckless. An illustration would be you walk into a room and you see a candle burning and someone asks you, 'all right, walk back out. How long was that candle burning?' And you say, 'well, if I could measure maybe how much wax is on the floor and measure how quickly the wax drips and how much wax burns and if I could measure the speed at which the candle burns'- you can try and do some calculations but still, you're not sure how tall the candle was when you started and you don't know, when you opened the door did you let in more oxygen so it starts burning faster when you measure it.

And you don't know when you walked out of the room did someone climb in the window and switch candles? There's so many variables that we don't know that it really requires faith for those things. Now there - there's a certain dependability you can measure in our known history, but beyond that it becomes very dangerous. I'll give you another example. They talk about ice-core dating - have you heard of that? They go to greenland or the arctic and they drill these ice cores - and they get some big ones - they go way down - they've got one that was as much as two miles long. And in these ice cores they've got rings - thousands of rings - matter of fact, 133,000 rings in one and they say, 'well, those rings represent years and that proves that the world is at least 133,000 years old - at least the polar caps that they measured because of these rings.

Well, they're starting out with an assumption that those rings are representing one season, but that's very biased and inaccurate. I'll tell you why. Any of you ever seen the ice build up on something through one winter? Have you noticed layers? You get a layer of snow and then you get some warm weather and it melts a little bit and then you get another layer of snow - I've seen in one storm - one storm - different layers on top of the car. And then they compress over time. How many of you have heard about the lost squadron during world war ii in 19 - how many of you heard of that - I see - pilots know about the lost squadron - they had all these new planes en route to fight for world war ii flying over greenland, got caught in bad weather, ran out of fuel, got lost, they landed, one flipped.

All the pilots survived - about of them - they landed in greenland up on the ice, most of them left their gear up - the one that had his gear down he actually flipped but he managed to climb out. Three days later they managed to get rescued - they had to walk out, they left the planes - it was the middle of a war, they didn't have time to retrieve them, snow covered them up, by the end of the war they went looking for them and they didn't know where they were. They pretty much forgot about it until some aviation buffs said, 'let's see if we can find them, they'll be worth something, we'll restore them.' They were brand new p-38s and I think two b-29s if I'm not mistaken. Well, they spent millions of dollars and ten years looking for them. Year after year going back - talk about a money pit.

That's because they figured, 'well, they've just got a little layer of snow. They're not' - they had the Markings of where they were when they went down. These are pilots, it was all registered, they had a record of it, they couldn't find them. Well, they started expanding their study and they got equipment that dug deeper, they started using sonar and they finally found some readings. They did some test holes and found the p-38s were feet down.

Not because they sank, but because they got covered by layer after layer of snow and they finally - they went to the b-29 and it was pretty much demolished. They couldn't recover it - they went to the p-38 and at incredible expense they brought it up. They went down, built a cave around it - 250 feet down - and took it apart, brought it out, restored it, and just a couple of years ago it flew its first flight. It's called 'the glacier girl'. It's a fully restored p-38 that flies.

You ask the people on that expedition did they see ice rings going down? Theoretically there should be about 50 ice rings. How do you get 250 feet down with 1,000 ice rings in 50 years? It just doesn't happen that way. There's a lot of bias that is being built into the evolutions teaching. You know why? A lot of people that believe in evolution realize that we've got two choices. You've all got two choices.

First of all, let's assume we're here and we know we're here - unless I think I'm really the only one here and you're all just a figment of my imagination and you exist for my entertainment - you're not really real - so I hope you all realize that now. But let's assume that through my senses and my knowledge of what I can take in from my environment I know that I'm here and you're there and you're probably feeling the same way about me - that we exist, okay? How'd we get here? You've got two choices - either accident or design. If it's an accident and it's just a bunch of things colliding in the universe and voila here we are, then there's really no purpose in life and what I think is not any more important than what you think because it's all random. It's chance. If it's a purpose that means there's a creator, there's an intelligence behind it and he's more powerful than we are.

Am I right so far? And that means that we have a reason for existing and we will give an account. We will answer to God for what we do with our lives. A lot of people are really uncomfortable with the belief that we will someday answer to God for our lives and you can't do whatever you want to do - that you're to live for the will of God. And they are fighting tooth and nail to develop a scheme that gets God out of the equation and that's evolution. And so there's an incredible bias to eliminate God from the equation and they bend over backwards to torture the data to say there is no God.

Ah - I didn't - I'm sorry - I hope that you're getting something edifying out of it. Acts 17:26 - who has that? I'm rushing ahead, there's a lot more I could say - jan, go over there. Oh, did I tell you about the volcanoes? They've been dating these volcanoes at billions of years and so one scientist thought, 'well, here we've got this volcano that we know was just formed up there in greenland and it's only 50 years old, let's date it.' They dated the rock using the methods they've been using to date all these other volcanoes for millions and billions of years and this volcanic rock they know was newly formed came out a billion years old. Just - it is so incredibly dubious - the dating methods. All right, I think we're ready.

Go ahead. Acts 17:26, "and he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings." Thank you very much. We're all related, aren't we? If you go to ancestry.com you'll find we all come from Noah. No, I just made that up. But I hear - I've never been there, but I hear they've got this website where you can all find out about your ancestry - you can find photographs and stuff.

You should all have a photograph of Noah in there somewhere because we are all related, aren't we? We are all related through adam, but that sort of got a new starting point at the flood. I've run out of time. Hey, let me read you a quote. 'Acts of the Apostles' p. 476, "Through the power of Christ men and women have broken the chains of sinful habits; they've renounced selfishness.

The profane have become reverent, the drunken sober, the profligate pure. Souls that have borne the likeness of satan have been transformed into the image of God. This change in itself is the miracle of miracles." We were made in the image of God and through the power of Christ we can be restored to that image, amen? We did not evolve. And if you'd like to know more about that, we've got a free book we'll send you, it's called 'how evolution flunked the science test'. All you've got to do is call the number on your screen: 800-study-more - that's 800-788-3966.

We'll be happy to send it to you. Ask for offer #169 and thank you for studying with us friends. Hope we all learned something together. God bless.